MONTREAL - If the 2007 Quebec election is a game of survival among the three main leaders, Mario Dumont may have already won.
While his two counterparts will almost certainly face leadership questions after Monday's vote, Dumont is poised for an unpredictable breakthrough that could leave him on the cusp of power.
Even the 12 seats or 20 per cent of popular vote needed for official party status in the Quebec legislature would be a significant advance for Dumont's party.
There are no pretenders to the throne standing by to shove Dumont aside, anyway. He is the face and heart of the ADQ.
"Dumont has already won," said Christian Bourque, a pollster with Leger Marketing.
"Even with those 12 seats, people will say he's made great progress."
The career prospects of the other two leaders are far less comfortable.
The Liberals under Premier Jean Charest could be the first government since the 1960s to fail to win back-to-back mandates.
Most observers are predicting a minority government, with the Liberals and the Parti Quebecois most likely to come out ahead.
In a minority scenario, parliamentary procedure could allow Charest to stay in power - even if he finished second - with the help of another party. Politically, Quebecers would probably not like the idea and Dumont has already ruled out joining in such a game, saying the party with the most seats governs first.
Charest went into the election with a comfortable lead over the PQ in most polls, and even further ahead of the ADQ.
That has all slipped away into one of the tightest three-way races in Quebec history, leaving the province poised for its first minority government since the 1870s.
"If Charest is premier, for some time he'd have some respite, even if he's reduced to a minority," said Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, a former PQ cabinet minister and Speaker of the legislature.
"Even in a minority situation, being a premier you're still basically an elected monarch so he's probably going to be fine for a while. But being leader of the Opposition is something else. And if he falls under 35 per cent of popular support, oh boy."
Bourque the pollster puts it this way: "It seems to me Jean Charest is fighting for his provincial political life."
Andre Boisclair faced serious questions about his Parti Quebecois leadership abilities at the outset of the campaign in a party that traditionally chews up leaders before spitting them out.
Even legendary former premiers like Lucien Bouchard and Rene Levesque have fallen to the wrath of the PQ's "pur et dur" hard-core separatists for hesitating in the pursuit of an independent Quebec.
But a steady campaign has softened some of Boisclair's harshest and most prominent critics.
"He's had an excellent campaign, in style, in substance, in content," said Bernard Landry, the ex-premier Boisclair replaced as head of the PQ.
Two weeks before the election campaign began, Landry accused Boisclair of "lacking judgment."
Bourque said Boisclair, despite Charest's unpopularity, seems unlikely to improve much on the 33 per cent support the PQ won in the last election.
"I don't know of any scenario besides a majority government that will be positive or mean job security for Mr. Boisclair," said Bourque. "With the PQ, there's no safety net, ever."
